


Breaking Bread

by RowboatCop



Series: Breaking Bread [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Bonding, F/M, Finn is unconscious, Food, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Rey and Poe meeting, everyone being perfect precious cinnamon rolls, hand holding, i feel like poe would really enjoy cooking for rey and finn okay, this is so gonna be a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:13:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RowboatCop/pseuds/RowboatCop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe and Rey (and food) bonding over Finn, before Rey leaves to find Luke. Pre-ot3.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Poe brings Rey dinner as she keeps her vigil over Finn. There's bonding.

The girl, Rey, has been sitting by Finn’s bedside for two hours, during which he’s stayed outside, doing no more than glancing in. Poe met her only briefly as they juggled Finn to safety, but BB8 has sung her praises as a kind soul, a master pilot, a fixer of bent antennae. Finn was obviously quite taken, too.

So he does what anyone would do to break the ice — he brings her dinner.

It’s as much because he wants to check on Finn as it is for her, it’s true, but he can be forgiven for split motivations, he thinks.

“Hi,” he whispers as the door swishes open, startling her from her bedside vigil.

“Hi.”

Her voice cracks in her reply, and she looks ready to drop.

“Poe Dameron,” he re-introduces himself. “I don’t know if you —”

“I remember.” She nods and smiles at him, a real smile hidden behind her exhaustion. “BB8 and Finn are both quite fond of you.”

He grins at that, though the silence that falls between them makes him squirm.

“I brought food.”

Rey’s eyes grow when she sees the bowl of simple root stew, but she makes no move to reach for it, and he hopes it doesn’t smell too pungent to her — it can take some adjustment for the new recruits.

“For you,” Poe clarifies, passing the dish across Finn’s sleeping form before he takes a seat across from her, on Finn’s left side.

“What, _all_ of it?”

“Yeah,” Poe smiles at her wide-eyed expression, but something twists in his gut that she could be so grateful for such a simple meal — especially after going up against a highly trained Jedi, against dark forces the general says she barely understands. She must need something more substantial, but they don’t have more to offer her.

He watches as Rey licks her lips and sets the bowl down in her lap, her fingers shaking slightly as she tears off a piece of the loaf and dips it into the thick broth.

“Oh,” she almost moans as she chews and swallows, then breaks off another piece of the loaf and sniffs it before devouring it. “What is this?”

“Bread,” Poe answers, unable to hide his amusement, the happy curl of his lip, as he watches her eat.

“Real bread?”

Her amazement is too real, too raw, to be amusing.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t remember if I’ve ever had it. The portions we got on Jakku were…”

“Garbage,” Poe supplies, but he feels bad at her frown.

“I suppose they were,” she agrees quietly, making him feel worse, “by comparison.”

He clears his throat.

“You should try the stew my grandmother used to make, back on Yavin 4. _That’s_ real food — spicy and lots of meat.”

“ _Real_ meat?”

“Real meat,” he agrees, watching her eyes grow to the size of saucers, her whole face open in a way that he can’t help but find incredibly charming. “I’ll make it for you sometime.”

She smiles, broad and _happy_ , and he smiles back. It’s easy to see what Finn saw in her, why saving her was so important. Not that she needed it, apparently.

“I wanted to thank you for helping complete my mission. And for taking care of BB8. And...him.”

Poe sets his hand over Finn’s, curling his fingers around the sleeping man’s, surprised at the tenderness he’s come to feel so quickly.

“It wasn’t much of a choice,” Rey denies her importance in the matter. “Just the right thing to do.”

“We’re all lucky you found Finn. For many reasons.”

She shrugs, eyes directed back down to her bowl.

“He was very brave,” she whispers, relinquishing her grip on her loaf of bread in order to lay her hand on Finn’s shoulder.

“Yes,” Poe agrees. “He saved my life.”

“Mine, too. He could have died.”

“Not bad for Storm Trooper.”

“No, not at all.” A little ghost of a smile crosses her lips. “Do you think he’ll stay here?”

“He’ll be welcome if he wants to.”

“General Organa wants to send me on a mission, but he… He doesn’t have anyone else.”

“He has me,” Poe promises.

She smiles, a sad smile, and squeezes her fingers around Finn’s shoulder.

“He’s all I have, too.”

Poe reaches across Finn’s sleeping form and lays his hand over hers, linking their fingers as they hold onto Finn.

“Not anymore.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They leave Finn’s bedside for long enough to visit the mess hall at breakfast the next day for a serving of porridge.

They leave Finn’s bedside for long enough to visit the mess hall at breakfast the next day for a serving of porridge.

“We usually have more food,” Poe tells Rey as they walk side by side down long tables of soldiers eating together. “But with the Republic capital destroyed…” It’s officially war time, now, he knows, though he’s been trying not to think about it too much. Even if they’ve won the first battle, there are more to come, and from now on there will be no more easy access to supplies. “...there’s less,” he finishes.

“More food? Than this?”

He tries to see it from her eyes, the dozens of resistance fighters eating together, the large pots of grains cooking at the back of the room.

“Hmm,” Poe agrees. “Eggs. Different kinds of bread.”

From the corner of his eye, he watches Rey rub her hand across her stomach, and something pangs in his chest at the thought of her hungry and alone.

“What do I have to do?”

“Do?”

“They’re not just going to _give_ me food,” she tells him as though he’s a child, as though she’s explaining the harsh reality of the way the world works. The way her world has always worked.

“Here, they will.”

“Oh.”

She stops in the middle of the mess hall, and he thinks she’s taking in the people now, more than just the supply of food. As soon as she’s still, though, the stares start, which isn’t terribly surprising, given that rumors about a young Jedi have been circulating around base for the thirty six hours she’s been here.

“Why are they looking at me?”

“You’re kind of famous,” he laughs. “The woman that took on Kylo Ren? A powerful jedi? The one that’s going to bring us Luke Skywalker?”

“I think I’ll probably disappoint them.”

“No,” he smiles down at her. “You won’t.”

Still, even though he smiles congenially at his comrades, he quietly warns them away. Rey doesn’t seem in a place to deal with their adulations right now.

Poe touches her back to guide her into the short food line, only to feel her tense up under his palm. He quickly pulls his fingers away, but Rey follows his hand until she’s pressed herself up against his side.

“Just stay close?”

“Yeah,” he answers easily, letting her be the one to make and keep the contact between them.

It feels nice — the way she leans into him, her body warm and gentle against his.

Poe just smiles warmly as they get their porridge and then move to seats on the outskirts of the cafeteria.

Rey hunches over her bowl, almost guarding it as she eats quickly, as though someone might take it from her.

“There’s more if you want it,” he tells her as he watches her finish her food almost before he’s started. She shakes her head, and he can’t tell whether it’s shyness or fullness, but he lets it drop. Rey will learn — quickly, he hopes — what’s available to her here.

He eats more slowly, uncomfortably aware of Rey watching him as he does so.

“Is it true you’re the best pilot in the resistance?”

It makes him blush because it’s not a title he chooses or claims, just one that’s been thrust on him by the general and his fellow pilots.

“I lead the pilots,” he offers instead.

“If you’re the leader, you must have been put there because you’re the best, right?”

Poe laughs.

“Maybe.”

He’s not falsely modest — he’s really really not, he’s a good pilot and he knows it, but he’s not comfortable being too singled out, especially so soon after a mission where they lost some of their own.

“Do you think I could fly an X-wing one day? I used to imagine getting to do it.”

Her excitement makes him grin.

“Do you think I could fly the Millennium Falcon?”

“I think Chewy is the one you’ll have to convince, not me,” she points out, and Poe smiles — a sad smile. He’d never met Han Solo until the attack on StarKiller Base, but his mother had, and he knows all the stories by heart.

“Perhaps when you return from your trip.”

Rey nods.

“I had never left Jakku until three days ago,” she tells him, her tone confessional. “And suddenly I’m flying the _Millennium Falcon_ and going to find _Luke Skywalker_.” Like these are the names of myths and legends.

“The universe is strange and wonderful,” he tells her, something his mother used to say.

“And terrifying.”

“That, too,” he agrees.

He’s surprised when Rey’s hand snakes across the table and touches his, and he’s not sure whether she’s offering her hand or needing his, but either way he links his fingers through hers.

“I suppose it’s mostly wonderful, though.”

  
  
  


 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I brought you something.” Poe turns a brown paper package over in his hand. “For your trip.”

“I brought you something.” Poe turns a brown paper package over in his hand. “For your trip.”

He re-enters the infirmary after another strategy session — still figuring out what their remaining alliances look like — and takes his seat beside Finn.

They’ve spent hours like this, the two of them being mostly silent but very comfortable, keeping a hand on Finn as though it will help somehow. (Although, Rey is strong with the Force, so maybe it does actually help. For his part, he thinks maybe even without the Force, Finn can feel it somewhere — that there are people here for him, on his side.)

Now, though, Rey is meant to leave imminently, and he can feel how scared she is, even if she’s tremendously brave about it.

Rey reaches across Finn’s body and takes the small wrapped package from Poe, turning it over in her hand curiously.

“What is it?”

“It’s a surprise,” he answers, unable to hold back a smile. “Open it after you eat a meal, and if you can, set up R2 to contact BB-8.”

“Why?”

“So I can watch you enjoy it,” he answers, grinning at the way she blushes.

“You’re so sure I’ll enjoy it?”

“Have you ever had chocolate?”

Her eyebrows shoot up almost to her hairline and she raises the package to her nose and sniffs, a deep slow breath as though she’s trying to pull in the scent.

“Oh,” she whispers. “I don’t… I don’t remember.”

“You’ll like it. Just wait to open it.”

“Until you can watch me.”

“Hmm,” he agrees, and strokes a hand down Finn’s forearm. He would bet Finn has never tasted the stuff, either, that providing access to such small pleasures is not a priority for footsoldiers of the First Order.

“I don’t have anything for you,” Rey whispers, like this is a serious problem.

“I don’t need anything,” he answers easily. “And besides, you saved my droid.”

She nods once, still wary, and takes another slow inhale against the paper. When she speaks, her voice is soft, barely a whisper.

“Thank you.”

“I’ll leave you to say good bye.”

As he stands, though, so does she.

Rey’s lips part, like she has something to say, but then she shakes her head and steps towards him, offering him an awkward hug.

Poe sets a gentle hand in the center of her back, moving slowly in case she tenses at the feel of it, but she just inhales deeply and relaxes more against him. As he hugs back and Rey starts to relax, it grows less awkward, more _nice_ and warm and good between them.

When she finally releases him, he backs out of the room carefully, leaving her to say goodbye to Finn’s sleeping form.

  
  


* * *

 

 

It’s later the same day, after a few more strategy meetings — long after they’ve gotten confirmation of Luke’s location and Rey’s arrival there — when BB8 races into the infirmary, announcing that there’s a personal video.

“Play it, buddy,” Poe encourages his droid, and sits back to watch Rey’s face appear in hologram above Finn’s bed.

“R2 still couldn’t set up a live link,” she explains, “but I think maybe we’ll be able to work something out with some parts on the Falcon. In the meantime, I thought this would do.”

Poe smiles at the way Rey looks — confident and beautiful as she takes a seat on the floor across from the camera and pulls out the package of chocolate he’d sent along. It’s good stuff from his personal stash, and he’ll wager the confectionary on Yavin 4 against most other sweets in the galaxy.

Slowly, she unwraps it with nimble fingers over the paper, so the crinkling sound is barely there. Once it’s open, she brings it to her nose again and inhales the scent of it.

“I’ve never smelled anything so good,” she whispers at the camera before she breaks off a small piece of the bar and places in her mouth.

It’s _sensual_ , the way she lets it melt on her tongue, slower than he’s seen her eat anything in the short time he’s spent with her. He likes this idea — that he’s given her the first taste of something to really savor, to really enjoy.

She tilts her head back, showing off the line of her neck as she moans, and he would think she was teasing him on purpose.

“That’s amazing,” she whispers. “I’ve never had anything like it.”

There’s an undeniably awkward pause as she looks at the camera, like she’s unsure of what else to say, and he’d swear she’s blushing.

“I, um,” Rey clears her throat. “I guess that’s all. I’ll try to set up R2 to make a live feed, if that’s okay,” her eyes turn away from the camera to look more directly at the droid, and Poe can hear R2 agree enthusiastically.

“So maybe when Finn wakes up, you could…” She shrugs, and Poe nods even though she can’t see him. “Give Finn a kiss from me,” she requests, and then the video ends.

BB8 turns on the camera without prompting, and Poe faces it.

“I’m glad you liked it,” he tells Rey, smiling against the words. “Just wait — I’ve got some more you’re going to love.”

He pauses, awkward, not sure if he’s supposed to flirt with her or not. But he’s never known a Jedi before, let alone a Jedi so skittish around people, so he really doesn’t know.

“What’s he like? Luke Skywalker, I mean. My mother used to tell me stories about him, and I’ve heard the General talk, but I never met him and I always wondered...”

This is something they definitely have in common — these shared stories about the rebellion, fantasies and bedtime stories and childhood wishes coming true. Of course, hers exist more as myths and legends, while his come from the source.

“Anyways, the Doctors say Finn will be ready to wake up soon, so we’ll send you a message when he does.”

He lifts Finn’s hand up so that it’s in the shot with him, so Rey can see him, too, and then presses a kiss to the back of it — from her.

BB8 shuts off the camera and sends the video while Poe presses another kiss to Finn’s hand.

From him.

 


End file.
